The View from Where i Stand

I stripped myself off all my fine-looking, pricey clothes, I took off all my shinny, lavish stuff. I took off all my shoes and silk stockings. I took off everything including my panache. I took off my cocky King Besigye attitude and laid it on my six by seven pure hardwood, hand-curved, leather-laced bed. As I walked to the window, I slipped out of my defiance and stood by the window stark naked and stared into the starry night sky. From my window I saw the world in all its beauty and glory. From outside my Window, I must have looked like a Greek god-chiseled out of quartz and sapphire. I stared at the city below and let my mind wonder yonder over the red car tail lights, the neon lights, the beautiful buildings and hundreds of cars sleeping their drive ways. Far beyond the glitter of the Central Business District, the night was deeper than my deepest appreciation for the beauty of my beautiful Diana back home in my bed, miles away slumbering and prolly dreaming about my voice, my wit and my C-bus. “That must be the red-light district there yonder” I thought.
I pulled on a pair of cheap slacks I had picked up from the flea market back home in Kampala. On with that, I had me a lousy Turtle neck T-shirt and a pair of car tire flip-flops. My chauffeur picked me up from the allée and dropped me off in the red-light district without asking any questions. That was one of the things I respected about him. As he drove off, I watched his tail lights fade away in the blackness of the neighborhood-in his wake a grey haze slowly grew and soon after thawed out into the darkness just like everything else here.
With my hands in my pockets, I strolled for what seemed to be like an hour until I stumbled into a shanty street with trickles of people in small groups of two’s and three’s. As I walked past them, I caught a whiff of the magnificence of a virtuous scent in the mild morning breeze. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to my right and there she was… she came closer to me, the scent of her body took me captive, seized up my full attention and completely redirected my interests to her face. When she smiled, the curl of her lips engulfed my memory and with it flew fifteen years back in time to that April Sunday afternoon when myself and Frank Kyomuhendo walked through Kiyanja to Virika Dioceses in the Heart of Fort portal town. It was there right after the Cemetery that sat on the gentle well kempt slope that overlooked the gorgeous little pond with ghost-haunted algae, magic fish and crystal water that danced with the shadows of the lush trees against the afternoon sun that we met her. She must have been friends with Frank before because they hugged, talked and laughed for most of the evening. Fast forward, it was fifteen-frigging years after and here she was in the heart of the red light district at such an ungodly hour wearing the scent of the devil and the smile of an Angel. We walked to the sound of loud local music playing out of a tavern perched at the edge of town, towards that place where the salty sea water communed with the old sulky earth. Here fishermen docked their boats and traders cut deals that resulted into fortunes and sometimes catastrophes. Here we stood and laughed about the good old Sleck days amidst silent whispers of the tide that seemed calmer than the Pope tonight. Occasionally we could hear the mellow swishing sound of a miniature tide breaking as the sea hugged the peninsula. We talked until we watched the delicate furs of the rising sun start to fluff up white pillows of clouds over the head of the still-sleeping sea at the threshold of the horizon. We talked until the fishing boats started arriving from their nightlong jaunts at sea. Then we walked away and our backs must have been illuminated in the deep orange and mauve beauty of the aurora to the enchantment of the morning skies.
My chauffeur picked me up at the Junction and drove me back to my Skyscraper hotel room. I rode back to my expensive, beautiful life in sheer silence-silence amassed in deep cerebral preoccupation. My thoughts took me back to my haven where I transformed from a man to Zeus, to where my goddess Diana complemented my weakness for her wetness and sweetness with her impeccable crown of celestial hair and glamorous bright, beautiful smile. As we drove through the red-light district, only now did I notice how life was unfair. I saw charred and tattered bits and pieces of humanity, floating around the dirty, clattered streets in torn clothes and almost no shoes in the bone-biting cold. They were the flotsam and jetsam of humanity being blown and tossed about by the invincible waves of life’s mean hand. Some of them had their hands cupped around their mouths as they drifted about, as if to harness the warmth of their breath. The rising sun shone on them with its earth-old radiance and I wondered what the Angel of the night was doing in this part of the world tonight. I wondered what path her life had taken over the past 15 years.
Back at my hotel room adorned in all my bling, I stood by the window again and looked down at the waking city. This time I saw pain, suffering, poverty and death. I saw sick, hungry rabid dogs and schizophrenic people. I saw money and power assembled in eternal grief and damnation. I saw a path, a path that many treaded to the skyline where it wound up into the forlone wilderness oblique to Hades fireplace. I saw hopelessness. “This is no path for me to take”, I said and turned around. Turned around and picked up the phone. I called My Diana and her voice on the other side sounded like a cup of cold,crisp, orange juice with just the right ounce of sugar in it. She lit up a smile on my lips and my day started. It started the way it just always has to. As I started out, the city hang low behind me from one side and underneath me from the other side. The lights…..